EDUCAUSE CONNECT’s latest 7 things you should know is about Ning. I’ve mentioned Ning in the past, including the fact that I find it frustrating that it requires a lot of logging in. My fear for using it for social networking in Education, is that if you have one network per unit / subject (whatever you call them in your university), then students will continue to get the idea of knowledge being in parcels. That’s what I like about Elgg – and even facebook, a student can see information about all their groups in a single place.
7 things mentions some of the drawbacks (e.g. potential issues of hosting data outside a university), as well as some of the advantages, (e.g. making use of students’ skills in using social networks, but without lecturers having to use Facebook etc).
Other recent “7 things” have included Google Apps, Flickr & Lulu